


Dodge Her Compassion

by KotsBlins



Category: Epic Battle Fantasy
Genre: Angst, Anna/Lance relationship focus, F/M, Implied Past Abuse, Pre-Relationship, Tension, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KotsBlins/pseuds/KotsBlins
Summary: Lance challenges everything that dares threaten him. Within the thrall of battle, with the taste of gunpowder in his mouth and adrenaline pounding like a bass line, he is undefeatable. But what he can’t defeat, he will run from. Namely, his past.
Relationships: Anna/Lance (Epic Battle Fantasy)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Dodge Her Compassion

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for this one. it came out of nowhere and had to be written. if anybody wonders (from other projects), i am not dead, just balancing heavy coursework. honestly you could give me suggestions and i'd write them at this point if i liked them, anything to not do chemistry homework. 
> 
> even got a winter theme here, nice. debating whether i should write a second part to this, but this is as of now standalone. i had a happier ending planned but it didn't fit

Lance unlocked the deadbolt, before throwing open the door. With his wiry strength, it should have smacked loud against the outside wall of the cabin. Instead, the door almost immediately swung back inward, aiming to crush his fingers. He caught the door before it slammed, shoving his left leg through.

Through the gap left by his leg, a frigid gust of wind blew in, carrying a dusting of snowflakes. They melted on the hardwood floor, little cold droplets beading on the shiny pine planks. 

"Perfect," he muttered in all seriousness. The situation was perfect, as well as the place and the time. It all came together nicely. Everyone else was asleep, buried in blankets and sheets, walling themselves off from the cold with heaps of pillows. Matt had given the fireplace enough wood to turn the whole small cabin into a verbatim toaster. 

So, Lance ventured into the crisp blizzard, making sure to lock the door behind him. One of the three brass deadbolt keys was in his inner coat pocket. 

The wind hurled the powder at the ground, at the trees, and everywhere else. In contact with the glass windows of the cabin, the snow was more similar to scraping sand. The trees groaned under a thick coating of wet snow. Wavering back and forth, the telephone pole near the house looked like it was going to snap and fall. 

Lance adjusted his coat, buttoning the top silver button with fumbling hands. Now it completely covered him, the edge of the collar jutting into his chin.

A gray scarf, the end of which was shoved into his shirt which hid far underneath his coat, protected the majority of his face. All that stuck out was his pale skin and the parts of his hair that were too long or short to put into order. An ushanka sat on top of his head, a gleaming red star pin centered on the front. The hat’s straps were fastened tightly around his jaw. A pair of black insulated gloves kept his fingers from freezing solid. 

However, his coat was still wet, buttery leather and silver eagle wings; his boots were still shiny black and combat-ready. Lance’s outfit was an ideological paradox, but it did keep him warm enough. 

He left soft, catlike footprints in the falling snow. A mountain lion now on the prowl, Lance slunk into the wilderness. He walked in total silence to the edge of the woods, leaping over a fallen and rotting trunk. Lance then disappeared into the tree line, fading into the snow-coated pines and maples. 

The only trace of Lance was his footprints, and even those were quickly being buried underneath more snow. He spent an indeterminate amount of time spent trudging through frozen bushes and drifts of knee-high snow. Lance finally stumbled through a tangled thicket of trees and gnarled blackberry bushes - tripping over a rock, flying forward and finally falling face-first into a veritable sea of snow. 

The bitter cold was painful but dulled into soreness almost immediately. This was due to two multiple things - his begrudging like of winter, and the presence of the flame and frost badges. The flame badge was only there because it made the wearer feel warmer as well as having fire resistance, and Lance had no doubt that he wouldn’t encounter anything fiery out here. As he got back up, he swore, muffled by snow and a scarf and the raging wind. Lance’s pants, gloves, and scarf were now stiff with a thin, crackly layer of ice where the snow had melted against his body heat and then immediately refroze.

Lance, standing, found himself at the edge of an open clearing. Pine trees surrounded him, wearing white like a cult. A few strange odds and ends of rubble stuck out from the powdery sea beneath him. Other than that, there was no sign of civilization. Lance knew that it wasn’t a far walk back to the cabin, but out in this weather, the wooden home seemed a whole world away.

Any creature with common sense had fled days before the blizzard had hit. Lance, in his superior intelligence, was right in the thick of it. Snow flecked his entire outfit, gathering in folds and flat planes.

His little adventure wasn’t out of the blue, though - it was highly calculated and planned. In no way was his excursion something irresponsible, at least in his mind. Lance had been craving silence for a while. He needed it, and at this point, he felt as if he was starting to suffer withdrawal symptoms. Silence had been out of stock in the Lance department ever since he had been forcibly inducted into the party.

Lance’s definition of silence was special, though, as it was not absolute zero - it was not the complete absence of sound. The silence he was searching for was the silence of rushing winds and grating snow. It was the steamy hiss and toothy grind of heavy machinery, or the thunderous crashing of salty ocean waves upon a silica shoreline. 

For him, silence meant the absence of others. Not another voice, not another person. Just Lance and the rest of the world around him. Complete quiet would be far too isolating.

In his paradise of convenience, he stood like a statue, letting the snow fall on him. Lance absorbed the cold like he was a cat sunning itself in warmth. When he finally moved again, leaving a dream, maybe half an inch of snow fell from his head and shoulders. 

The frayed nerves and tension ever-present in his mind had calmed themselves in the cold, for now. Things that were threatening to spill out and over that would make him feel vulnerable and weak were successfully suppressed again. 

And then the disastrous affair that had transpired a week ago rushed back into his head. 

* * *

_"There are things, Anna, that I am not going to talk about! Don't you get it! I am a private person already, okay, but this is pushing it!"_

_She stared at him in shock. Lance had never, not once, really yelled at her. He had come close to it, his voice low and angry, holding unspoken threats - but never this. Lance had always managed to restrain himself. But now, he towered over her, almost comparable to a monolith in how imposing he now was. Red carvings in the black stone, red eyes in the black coat. In a single moment, Lance had changed into something unrecognizable._

_He took a single step forward, eyes narrowed and cold, his boot thwacking against the hardwood floor. For a single second his hands unconsciously clenched into fists. Maybe even for a microsecond - and really, maybe it didn't happen at all. Lance couldn’t clearly remember._

_Nevertheless, Anna shrunk back from him. She fell back against the wall, feeling its cool presence against her bare shoulders. Her eyes had widened in shock, glinting with potential tears._

_With her audible bump on the wall, Lance snapped out of whatever he had sunken into. In a jittery panic, he stared at Anna, searching for something undefined. Raking her all over with his eyes. Then he took his leave, sprinting out of the room, flying down the stairs, and fleeing the building altogether._

_Anna heard both the door and the screen door slam. She felt the reverberations of the doors all the way up on the second floor._

_"Lance!" Anna had yelled, calling out, but her plea swiftly dissolved into the air as he ran. As he ran away from her. He was running from many things. Lance was running from his distant past, his immediate past, and his present thoughts - none of the three were leaving his mind, no matter how quickly he ran or how far he went from the inn._

_Lance leapt into the Neon Valkyrie with a single fluid motion. He had the keys out and hovering over the ignition - but then his hands started shaking uncontrollably. Lance saw things, after that, imposing memories staining his view with splotches of ink. Purple bruises and red handprints splattered violently across a relatively innocent canvas. Nothing was there, nothing was happening, nothing had happened (to Anna), but he felt the memories like a phantom pain - almost as if those marks were still present._

* * *

As far as Lance knew, only he and Anna were aware of what had happened. Anna hadn't talked to him much since then, avoiding him at every possible opportunity. Lance was completely aware of what Anna was trying to do, which was her convoluted plot goad him into an awkward conversation that he didn’t want to have. Well, too bad - opening up to people was just something that he would never do. 

Thinking about it now, Lance really hoped Anna hadn’t followed him out and watched him hide in the Valkyrie. In his great warrior-tank, his Neon Valkryie, he had been a broken man. He had curled up, frail and fearful, in her nuclear wings and halogen lights. For a moment, his eyes flashed with an odd emotion, halfway between anger and grief.

He hesitated to turn around and start his trek back to the cabin, correctly anticipating a strong gust of wind that kicked up sandblasting-strength particles of snow. It all slammed violently against his back. After another spot of waiting, Lance turned to meet his same empty clearing, with the same rolling sea of snow. 

Or, actually, a clearing that wasn’t empty. It took him a moment to pick her out of the surroundings. Anna’s eyes were angry and her face was split between confusion and annoyance. Dark circles stuck out of her face like smears of kohl. She was all bundled up in one of Matt's puffy jackets that he denied shoplifting. Her face was hypothermia red and her strikingly green hair jutted out from beneath a soft gray beanie. 

"Anna?!" His voice cracked, conveniently fitting into a pause in the wind. Although Lance was generally loud enough to carry for a decent distance, Anna now knew with certainty that she had completely surprised him.

He slogged through the snow, pushing himself, reaching her quickly. "What are you doing out here." Lance hissed through the scarf, enunciating each word.

"I came to ask you that question." She said sourly, noticeably shivering. Her breath fanned out into the air. Anna was panting and heaving; Lance came to the conclusion that Anna had woken up, shoved all of this winter gear on haphazardly, and ran after him. Maybe she had been waiting all of this time for him to turn back around.

"Well, that doesn't matter, it’s a non-concern. You, on the other hand, don't belong out here, and I-"

"Do you belong out here freezing to death, Lance?" Admittedly, Anna had a point. 

"I wouldn’t let myself freeze to death. Don't concern yourself over me of all people.” He said this lowly, with a rumbling in his throat - Lance was on the precipice of snarling like a caged animal. 

He unfastened the glittery, glassy blue snowflake from his coat, and held it out to Anna. She looked at him in abject refusal at first, but Lance gave her one of those looks that make people do what you want them to do. She took the badge begrudgingly. Immediately, the cold bit into Lance with sharp, hungry teeth.

"That is not the point! Why are you out here?!"

"I...needed to be alone." It was almost physically painful to admit that, but as the words spilled from his mouth, Lance felt a strange sense of catharsis. 

"In the middle of a damn blizzard. Yes, sure, whatever you say Lance."

"It's none of your business." 

"Actually, I would say it's plenty of my business, seeing as I am your g-"

"My what?" Lance quickly interrupted, the cold and neutral mask falling from his face and swiftly being replaced by smugness. 

"I - oh, that's not the point either! The point is that you're out here all alone, blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault. I’m not stupid, Lance. I know how you are when you think nobody’s looking.”

The smugness was swiftly replaced with all the expression of a brick wall. Panic rattled in his mind. The frost gathering on his hat and his shoulders leached up to his spine in a matter of seconds. 

“I don’t want you to have to run and hide from things that make you upset. You can come to me, you know?” 

Lance remained silent, hoping that these allusions to a certain event a week ago would not continue. If he was lucky, which rarely happened, she didn’t follow him out. 

“You-” Anna took a deep, shaky breath, and then continued. The noises of the storm had faded for Lance at this point and now all he could hear was her voice - loud and clear without any radio interference. “You don’t have to always be alone when you deal with things. I hear you thrash around with nightmares. You’ve told me you never have any, and you’re a damn liar.” 

Anna stepped forward, her face coming up only to his neck, her eyes narrowed into sharp green glass bottle shards. “I hear you whimpering in the middle of the night, and I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. You’d just shut me out. You’ve done it before! I saw you in the Valkyrie and I knew I couldn’t help you - I mean at that moment I didn’t want to, but standing here I am going to tell you that in that car, that tank, whatever - you looked shattered, Lance. Breaking right in the seat.” She struggled to get the next words out, to think of a way to express her thoughts without scaring him off. “You need to...I...I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. I care about you.” Anna stood there silently, almost guiltily, after saying that. “Please,” she said, softly, and trailed off into silence. 

Anna had in fact seen him there, in that state, in the tank. Well, then. That fact took immediate importance over the other things she had just said, no matter what they were or how her other words made him feel. Lance engaged autopilot, his shields clanking into place and locking tightly. 

"How can you even talk about things you don't understand, Anna?" He snapped back at her, acetic, as he stepped past her mechanically. Lance was intent on avoiding this conversation. Thunder rumbled in his hearing. "You've got no way to know any of it, right or wrong, left or right or third position. And I don’t intend on telling you anything, either. That goes for all of you in this stupid little party. Really, Anna…you don't know jack apart from trees." With a final resounding sentence like the clash of swords, Lance left her standing there in the snow, shoving back through the wet white powder at a hasty pace.

She watched him go quietly, her hands clenched into tight shivering fists. Her nails cut red crescents into her pale palms. The wind burnt on her face, even with the frost badge. Anna just wasn’t dressed for this weather. 

He was a wraith, she thought, with that greatcoat flapping like a flag in the wind. Lance contrasted with the snow like a gravestone sticking up from loamy soil.

"I can't help you if you won't even admit that something hurts," Anna whispered, eyes locked on the man who was running from her again. She felt as if she could cry, as if she could scream loud enough to shake the stars from their places. 

“I’m not doing anything wrong!” Anna finally yelled, kicking the snow angrily. “I can’t help if you’ve never experienced compassion!”

Then she stood there, quietly, defeated in the snowy drifts. Her hands hung loosely at her sides. 

Anna felt, staring into the velvet night sky, as if she would never be able to help him. Whatever he was struggling with, he just wouldn’t open up to her, or anyone else for that matter. Anna wondered, at this point, if it was even worth it to try.

“I care about you,” she muttered to the snow and the sky and the trees. “I care about you. We care about you.” Anna said, staring down at her feet, slightly bashful. “I care about you, deeply.” Her words were like honey, sticky sweet and hard to swallow. Suddenly, her face was burning up, and her hands were clasped together tightly. She took a deep, deep breath - and let all the stress out, to fade away into the air and get lost amidst the falling snowflakes. Anna noticed, suddenly, that the blizzard had calmed. 

In the dark of the night, in the windblown dunes of snow, she did not lose her resolve.


End file.
